China has warned the head of Norway's Nobel Institute not to award this year's Nobel peace prize to a jailed Chinese pro-democracy activist, saying that the move would risk damaging relations between Beijing and Oslo.

Liu Xiaobo was charged with 'inciting subversion of state power' and given 11 years in prisonPhoto: REUTERS

A campaign is growing inside and outside China for the award to be given to Liu Xiaobo, a dissident academic who was sentenced to 11 years in prison last Christmas for circulating a petition calling for greater democratic and legal rights in China.

Geir Lundestad, the director of the Nobel Institute, said the warning had been issued by Madame Fu Ying, China's deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to London, at a meeting at the Chinese embassy in Oslo.

"(Such a decision) would pull the wrong strings in relations between Norway and China, it would be seen as an unfriendly act," Mr Lundestad told the Norwegian news agency NTB, recalling Fu's comments at the meeting.

On Tuesday a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman reiterated the minister's warning, saying that awarding Mr Liu said that would send the wrong message.

"This person was sentenced to jail because he violated Chinese law," she told a news briefing in Beijing.

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"His actions are diametrically opposed to the aims of the Nobel prize. Mr Nobel's behest was that the Nobel Peace Prize be awarded to somebody who promoted peace between peoples, promoted international friendship and disarmament."

China's warning comes at a time when Oslo and Beijing are in the midst of trade negotiations that could see Norway exporting its expertise in offshore oil and gas drilling to China.

However, Mr Lundestad said that the secretive five-man peace prize committee would not be swayed by Chinese pressure. "China has come with warnings before, but they have no influence on the committee's work," he said.

The award is due to be announced on October 8.

China has been angered by the decisions of the Nobel committee in the past, as in 1989 when Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, won in the year of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Mr Liu, a 54-year-old former literature professor, circulated the Charter 08 petition calling for greater human rights and freedoms in China, echoing the Charter 77 issued by Czechoslovakian dissidents during the era of Soviet occupation.

Last week Vaclav Havel and several other key architects of Charter 77 wrote an open letter to the Nobel Committee urging it to honour Mr Liu and make him the first Chinese recipient of the award.

"In doing so, the Nobel Committee would signal both to Liu and to the Chinese government that many inside China and around the world stand in solidarity with him, and his unwavering vision of freedom and human rights for the 1. 3 billion people of China," they wrote.

Within China several petitions and open letters have been circulating informally on the internet calling for support for Mr Liu's stand to be recognised.

One open letter circulating from a retired professor of politics, said that the award would serve as a timely warning to China's leaders that they cannot afford to ignore human rights.

"International society urgently needs to remind the Chinese authority that it cannot destroy the constitution, ignore the rule of law and do whatever it likes to do," said the author. "To award Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Prize would be an authoritative and effective reminder as well as an indirect protest against what the authority has done." Another leading academic, He Weifang, a law professor who signed Charter 08 and was 'exiled' to a provincial university in the far western province of Xinjiang as a result, told *The Telegraph* he would be delighted if Mr Liu won the prize.

"Personally I think it is an excellent proposal. Xiaobo deserves it as a respected scholar. To make him the winner would also reflect well on committee. Last year the prize was been given to President Obama, which caused great controversy. I think if it goes to Xiaobo, there won't be much argument."